Employee empowerment is the mantra every leader is supposed to chant at every opportunity. Does that work or are you better off really doing something about empowerment?
As buzzwords go “empowerment” is amongst the top 10 in any human resource setting. Companies and leaders sing paeans to the glory of empowerment. And then they go about business as usual satisfied in the knowledge that they did their part in making their people more productive and satisfied.
Now if that were the only thing people did i.e. talk loudly about empowerment then we would have been all set. After all other people have spoken eloquently about “diversity” and gone happily to sleep at the wheel. These “all talk and no action” or “all hat and no cattle” people are just ignorant wannabes – harmless unless they catch you at a dinner party and then that is usually the end of your evening!
The problem is also not that the empowerment talk does not match the walk. The problem is that the empowerment talk is followed by action that has the exact opposite impact. Kinda like urging you to take action on “global warming” while leaving all the lights on their 10,000 sq ft homes or talking about “freedom” while invading countries.
So our “no action” heroes are a little less dangerous that our “shoot first and think later” ignoramuses. Which one are you?
If you are in the category of “talk and walk synchronizers,” then you know that empowerment comes from some basic action on the part of the leadership. Talk is good in as much as explaining your philosophy but empowerment is about trust and trust comes from action…consistent over a long period of time!
Here are some ways to empower employees:
1) Articulating a clear vision – where are you headed?
2) Articulating a clear set of objectives and metrics – what are we aiming at along the way; how will we know if we failed or succeeded?
3) Articulating a clear organization – where do they fit in?
4) Articulating a clear system of rewards and punishment – fair and honest evaluation resulting in fair rewards and if applicable, fair punishment
While this is not an exhaustive list, it is clearly one that includes the “must haves.” Don’t kid yourself. You are not empowering anyone without these four things.
Now articulating means communicating in some fashion. and the cardinal rule of leadership communication is: your actions must match your words or you have empowered your way to yawns or worse, ridicule. Either way you are irrelevant and irrelevant leaders to not empower anybody, including themselves.
